Setting Up Macos Window

---
name: setting-up-macos-window
description: Setting up the macOS window layer when porting a Windows game to Metal. Covers AppDelegate + NSWindow programmatic setup, a CAMetalLayer-backed GameView with CAMetalDisplayLink, GameViewController lifecycle, AppKit notifications routed into the engine via `Engine*` callbacks, keyboard/mouse input replacing WndProc, fullscreen transitions, cursor visibility and mouse-look confinement, sleep prevention, and per-frame screen state for sizes and EDR. Use whenever the question touches porting a Windows game window to macOS — AppDelegate / GameView / GameViewController setup, replacing WndProc, fullscreen, cursor handling, window resize, or AppKit notification routing.
---

# Game Window Port

A guided workflow for wiring up the macOS window layer when porting a Windows game to Metal.

## Scope and Companion Skills

This skill covers windowing concerns: the AppKit surface, the view that owns the `CAMetalLayer` and the render-tick source, lifecycle, notifications, and input.
The boundary with the engine is the `Engine*` callback API described in Phase 6.
Past that boundary, presentation and rendering live in companion skills:

| Question is about | Skill |
|---|---|
| Drawable acquisition, presentation flow (`waitForDrawable`, `signalDrawable`, `present`), layer property semantics (`pixelFormat`, `colorspace`, `drawableSize`, `maximumDrawableCount`, `displaySyncEnabled`, EDR opt-in), Metal 3 vs Metal 4 | `presenting-metal-drawables` |
| D3D12/Vulkan API mapping to Metal 4 (device, queue, command buffer, encoder, PSO, shader compile, swap chain) | `translating-to-metal4-api` |

## Reference Routing

| Question is about | Read |
|---|---|
| Working implementations of `GameView`, `GameRenderer`, `GameViewController`, `AppDelegate` | `references/window-implementation.md` |… install to load the full skill